From Mario's 25th Birthday to Capcom's Four Games - News Roundup 13th September 2010

Happy Birthday, Mario!

Today marks the 25th anniversary of gaming's most recognisable and beloved mascot... and to be honest, I'm not sure that I can do the occasion justice in this short news post. Mario is much more than a collection of sprites or even a well-known brand name: he's a genuine icon that's practically synonymous with videogaming itself as well as our emergent gaming culture.

Shigeru Miyamoto probably didn't know that Mario would become such a massive part of our lives when he was putting the finishing touches to Super Mario Bros 25 years ago. In fact, most of the design decisions (such as the bright contrasting overalls) were simply chosen to cope with the hardware limitations of the NES... and he was even named after Nintendo's warehouse landlord who continually demanded rent money from the fledgling company! Had a sequence of happy coincidences and accidents not played out in the way that they did, we could be celebrating a very different anniversary altogether.

Regardless of how unlikely an icon Mario appears to be, there's no doubt that the Italian plumber and Shigsy deserve seriously special treatment today. We invite you to raise a glass and wish him a very happy 25th birthday. Many happy returns!

Want to wish Mario a very happy birthday? Fancy telling us about your favourite Mario or Nintendo Moments? Drop us a line in the comments- or head over to the official site to enter the Mario Birthday competition!

Capcom To Announce 4 New Games This Week

The Tokyo Game Show is kicking off this week- and Capcom's European division has announced that they'll be bringing an impressive four new titles along.

“Tokyo Game Show this week. If i had to guess at the Capcom announcements I’d guess at 4 new games announced and some new MvsC3 characters.”- via Twitter

So, what could these four new games possibly be? Resident Evil 6 will almost certainly be confirmed thanks to last week's intel- and rumours seem to suggest that a new Devil May Cry could also be in the works. Naturally we'll keep you updated by the wire. [via VG247]

New Kinect Dashboard In Action

Today's exciting trailer to set you up for another long week is none other than... the new Xbox 360 dashboard. Sorry, folks.

At least you'll get to see the smooth, slick new stylings and the slidy Kinect functionality in all its glory; though I'd recommend turning your speaker volume down before mashing play. We're glad to see that it's finally working, since the version we sneakily saw running at Gamescom was bricked beyond all recognition.